Linking Opera with a POS till

unknown

HI All
Has anyone linked a Till back to opera and if so can you give me some information on what way you did this -

1. Was the Till just for Cash sales and if so is it linking back live to the cash account in Opera, or just posting a summary of all the transactions at the end of a day back to Opera.


2. Is the till linked to the stock in Opera so that it would check live stock availability etc?

3. Is Opera just updated at the end of every day with the stock transactions going through the till?

Any information would be greatly appreciated

Many thanks
Arline Watson
RBK Technology

Many thanks

colin-avey

Hi Arline,

We have several bespoke solutions based around what is now SagePOS (was Pegasus owned once). We have this operating at several levels of intergeneration from just generation Sales Orders for stock moved to full Sales,Stock,Nominal and Cash Book. Gift vouchers are the only real problem we have come across with a full NL/CB link (making sure they are not counted a cash when redemed as cash was taken when they were sold).

batches can be summarised or detailed. We have also replicated the Opera Discount/Pricing structure for trade counter sales either cash or on account.

I believe Graham Kinchen also has a solution for SagePOS.

I can only comment on the way the SagePOS link work.

Basically transactions are polled from the tills and updates pushed to the tills on a schedule. Some do this daily and some have it running every few minutes.

The main reason to do as a batch is to give the till autonomy in case of other network/server failure. Can still take money even though other systems down. Also useful at month end if not using Open Period Accounting.

In practice we have found have a live link even for just stock enquiries to be more of a pain than it is worth, even when the till is on the same network as the Opera and not remote. Period ends and backups in particular. The shop is generally set up as it own warehouse to keep the stock separate. We have a system with on customer where the stock levels from their 40 sites is upload to each site overnight so a basic stock enquiry can be made and then the individual shop or main warehouse is contacted by phone to double check and organise moving it.

I would guess the basic process is going to be similar for any solution.

If you haven't decided on the ePOS solution yet the besides SagePOS, Kamerin and Davidson Richards both have solutions I believe.

Hope this Helps/ Makes sense
Colin